The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for chamfering the edges of a planar plate. The present invention has been developed to chamfer the edges of a printed wiring board as one of the manufacturing process steps thereof. However, the apparatus can be utilized for chamfering planar plates in general.
Conventional planar plates are chamfered one by one. Namely, one plate is positioned correctly on a chamfering table and a tool chamfers the four edges on one side of the plate, and then the plate is reversed and the same process is repeated to chamfer the edges on the reverse side of the plate.
Such a conventional process is time consuming as the plate must be positioned accurately on a table, especially when the chamfering tool is guided automatically. Basically, four edges on one side of the plate are first chamfered and then the plate must be inverted to chamfer edges on the other side of the plate so that the conventional automatic chamfering apparatus is very difficult and time consuming to operate, especially when the plate to be chamfered is thin because positioning of a thin plate is difficult.
Consequently, conventional chamfering apparatus suffer the disadvantages of difficulties in maintaining an accurate working plane, inaccurate positioning and warping of the plates, and damage to the plates caused by the chamfering tools. Thus ordinary chamfering is time consuming and results in poor productivity.